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I'm currently shopping together a dialogue between two people, where one person repeats a previously used phrase in a mocking way.

彼女はいわゆる『真鍮のような』語っていますか? Kanojo wa iwayuru "shinchū no yōna" katattei imasuka?

"So she's supposed to be "Like Brass", you say?" or "She's "Like Brass", huh?" Along the lines of the above sentences, something like "I thought you said she was strong?"

This was something I cobbled together after reading through a bunch of dictionary terms, and I wanted to see if this made grammatical (or even lingual) sense?

I'm terrible at reading kanji, so romaji is greatly appreciated if possible!

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Your translation attempt has several grammar errors, but even after fixing them, your sentence is only going to mean something along the lines of "Is she telling the story commonly known as Like Brass?" いわゆる ("commonly known as ~", "what people call ~") is not something you need here. 語る is "to tell a (long) story", which is not a right verb, either.

If you want to repeat someone else's statement in a mocking or surprised manner, all you need is だと/だって/ですって:

彼女は「真鍮のよう」ですって? (polite at least superficially)

「真鍮みたい」だって? (informal)

She is "like brass", you say?

(By the way, I have never seen such a simile as 真鍮のような人. Is this common in other languages? Or is this "brass" supposed to mean something other than that yellow metal?)

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  • I have heard the phrase that someone is "like brass," but in my experience, it is nowhere near as common as "an iron man," "made of steel," or "ironclad." It is also worth noting that some people mean "like brass" to refer to weakness instead of strength (as brass is more fragile than a lot of other metals). Aug 30, 2021 at 6:08
  • I can't recall hearing someone say someone was "like brass" in English either. Not denying it's possible, but I too wondered if it was something regional or specific to a different language.
    – Leebo
    Aug 30, 2021 at 6:49
  • Thanks for all the responses! I wasn't very confident in the sentence itself, and barely managed the phrase "like brass" after reading until I got a headache. To answer the question about the choice of simile, it's not very common. To my knowledge, not many people use brass as descriptor. It was mainly a situation-specific remark, though the comment regarding weakness was very enlightening for me as well! Aug 31, 2021 at 3:44

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